The demons of the underworld
by ffgamer
Summary: ff III characters fight a demon and learn about things from the past that may haunt them forever
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1 introduction

Down a murky corridor, older than time itself lurked a creature more terrifying even than death. It was one of the six great evils, the alteregos of the six great angels, the last of the entities to remain. These 12 deities had fought with each other, and only one chose to save its own disgusting life. Many an adventuring party had gone into this corridor searching for lost treasures or evidence of a civilization long past its day of destruction. Four came in search of what was in store. Their names were Sabin René Figaro, Celes Chere, Locke Cole and Cyan Garamonde. These four friends were fresh from a battle of good against evil, pitting their strength against the evil Kefka, finally banished from the world, and bringing peace to the planet. Most of the other friends that had been a part of this group had dispersed and gone their own ways, until a few months later, when they heard of a new evil rising from an unknown place under the sea. Everyone came back together from different parts of the world and decided to send four of their best. Our story takes place in the town of Kohlingen with Locke Cole, ex-treasure hunter.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 The Escape

It had been four months since I had last seen all my friends, and the last time I saw Celes. I couldn't even remember her face, let alone the times we all spent together. On the outside, my face had shown to everyone that I didn't mind that we were all going to split apart, but inside it was as if someone was tearing my organs away and kebobing them with a fence post. I even wondered if they might even all be together, doing quests for everyone. This thought made me so mad that I accidentally set a woman on fire. "Ah'm burnin'! 'Elp me!" she screamed. I quickly put her out. "I'm really sorry ma'am," I said in a hurry, "I didn't mean to do it," I finished, rather sheepishly. "You should be!" she spat. I don't know what's been up with these people. Lately, people seemed very hateful towards me, as if I had done some great wrong. I performed spells and rarely did I actually hit people... wait... maybe that's why... That point aside, I didn't consciously try to hurt anyone. The small town of Kohlingen had many souls for such a small village, and they were very open to new things. This open-mindedness soon evaporated when one of the town children had been hurt by an outraged esper. At this thought, I sat down on a nearby bench. It was really peculiar that espers would all of a sudden attack people, let alone with an uncontrollable rage that made them seem almost...evil. It was as if some dark and malignant force was controlling all that was good and bending it to their will. As I was consumed by my thought, a boy walked up to me and shook me out of my stupor. "Ah' you Locke Cole?" he said. I was rather confused at this outburst; everyone in this town knew everyone's name. "Yes, I suppose I am." I replied, cautiously. The boy talked to me in a monotone, one that made me think that he really didn't want to talk to me: "A man by th' name of Sabin wan's me to summon you." My heart skipped several beats. Could this truly be the Sabin that I had been in a team with?


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 The Airship

"Sabin?" I choked. "Yeah, tha's wha 'e said 'is name was." The boy beckoned to me, and I followed, almost outdistancing him because I was so anxious. At last, we got into the cafe. There, at a middle table, was a man of tall stature eating vast amounts of food. This man was Sabin René Figaro, twin brother to Edgar Figaro, King of Figaro Castle. "Lopchk!" he shouted. "What?" I said, confused. He promptly swallowed and said, "Good to see you again!" I went to sit down with him, and all of a sudden his expression went grave. "We've had reports of a great evil that makes espers go crazy, and magic to go off target. Maybe you've experienced it?" he said hopefully. "Yes... yes that makes sense! One of my espers attacked an old man, and a fire spell hit a lady, and I didn't even try!" I spluttered. "It's happened at Figaro," he said, "and Terra and Celes say it has happened to them too." He finished. "You mean you've talked to them?" I said. He replied slowly, as if he didn't want to answer this particular question: "We've kept in touch, but we have all decided we should get everyone together, for one last fight." This made me feel increasingly better, as I had been alone for nearly four months. This time when he continued his speech, it was happy. "Setzer let me borrow the airship, and everyone is out in the forest!" he boomed. I made no hesitation to wrest Sabin from the table, make him pay for the 15-course meal, and shove him out the door to show me where the airship was. "Do you think you could be more rough?" he asked politely, but gruffly. "Shut up, big baby," I muttered. The last I heard was "You little punk..." and I was hoisted up and thrown bodily through the air. "Good to see you too Sabin," I said, a little disgruntled, with a kink in my neck, but happy all the same. After an hour's walk out of Kohlingen, we found our way into a clearing, and there was the magnificent Falcon Airship, gleaming in all its beauty. I stood there crying, basking in its glory, when Sabin pulled me rudely to reality. "Come on you skinny ogre, get in the thing already!" Maybe it wasn't ALL that great to have Sabin back to his normal, smelly, rude self, but at least I wasn't alone. Come to think of it, he disappeared... FLRRRPTBOTT! "Oh yeah, that's the ticket," I heard from somewhere distant. "Sabin," said a cool female voice, "you really need to cut back! You've been eating a lot of food again haven't you?" I spun around, and there, at the foot of the airship, was Celes.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4 Awkward Conversations

For a moment, we both stood there, not saying a word, until Sabin came back shoving Celes and me into the airship saying. "We don't got all day, and besides, what's eating you two?" Apparently, Sabin was the most clueless being in the world, and then a thought popped in my head: _You're eating us Sabin, that and everything else within a mile's vicinity._

This thought made me snigger, and just at that point in time I got a sharp smack on the back of the head from Sabin. Once we got into the cabin of the _Falcon_, I saw the whole crew I had missed for so long: Mog and Umaro sitting in a corner sleeping; Setzer and Edgar drinking copious amounts of heavy alcohol and saying things that made no sense to the great amusement of Terra and Cyan; Shadow, Strago, Relm, Gogo, and Gau in deep conversation about magic and its uses in all situations. It was truly great to be home again. Once again, Sabin showed his gift of the having sensitivity level and empathy of a dull stick; and once again, Sabin shoved Celes and me into yet another room, the engine room of the Falcon Suddenly the air of the room shifted violently to some awkward kind of air that made me want to stab myself in the eye... or maybe that was just the way I felt with one that I liked dearly. It was Celes who first spoke. "Er, how have you been? " then she quickly added, "I mean... if you don't want to say anything--?" I chose to take a while to reply. In the end I said, "I missed you... a lot." At first we stood, and then we drew towards each other. An inebriated Edgar walked into the room and shouts, "WHO WANT'S HORS D'OEUVRES?" Then without any forewarning, Edgar crumpled into a pitiful heap on the ground. I couldn't help it, I burst out laughing and fell on my face clutching my sides; Celes on the other hand looked like someone had slapped her across the face with the blunt side of a sword. Through the open door, I could hear Sabin yelling at Setzer for drinking all the booze (Setzer nodded and said "yssr, I've ben veree baddd..."), and Shadow knocking out everyone that was involved in the discussion of magic because they didn't agree with him. I could tell it would be hard to find some time to talk to Celes alone, what with these violent, alcoholic, lazy and sometimes stupid people that we lodged with, but I knew we must, at least, to sort out our problems.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5 A Little Action

A day later, in our search for the so-called supreme evil, we (Sabin, Edgar, and Setzer) had to stop for some 'supplies'. In the end, Sabin, Edgar and Setzer went to the cafe, looking for high quality whiskey, and everyone else went browsing. Celes and I decided to take this wonderful opportunity to talk to each other and sort out feelings and such. The only problem: Cyan. "Dost thee wish to go to the weapon shoppe over yonder?" he asked me, anxiously. I didn't really want to offend him, but hey, what are ya going to do? "No, I'd rather stick my head in a pile of cat crap right now," I started, "but maybe, after like 30 minutes, we can talk?" Cyan walked away looking rather unhappy, and I turned back to Celes. As I was about to talk to her, a giant rumble came, shaking the town. "Sabin is at it again," Celes said lazily. " Still though, that might be a little bit big, even for Sabin... AHHHH!" Just then, a giant eyeball with wings came flying towards us. "'Tis a doom gaze!" shouted Cyan, and Sabin dropped his bottles of booze and ran towards Celes, Cyan, and me. "Go back to the Hell from whence you came, foul beast!" leered Cyan again. Sabin used a great bit of X-magic, the Ultima-Merton combo. That was ineffective, so Celes used the X-fight command. Now, normally, this attack coupled with the atma weapon and the illumina would've done somewhere around... 72,000 damage. Against this enemy, eight hits caused 19 damage. "What's up with this thing!" said Sabin. Just then Cyan called upon Raiden. We all knew that summoning an esper was a bad thing because their will was bent, and instead of going towards doom gaze, it came right back and cut all of our life forces, bringing us all down to one hit point. This time, it was the doom gaze's turn. Doom gaze used x-magic: only with his evil powers, it happened eight times. In order, the doom gaze used Ultima, Ultima, Ultima, Ultima, Merton, W-Wind, Quake, and another Ultima. It did somewhere in the 200,000 range. We passed out, and doom gaze proceeded to destroy the town we were in. When we all woke up, the town was a smoldering ruin.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6 recovery

Not many survivors were left after the demon's rampage, and fewer still were able to talk. Bodies lay mangled and gored on the ground, and there was fire everywhere. Celes decided to get everyone together to help find a place to put all the surviving people. "We could send them to Figaro, couldn't we Edgar?" she suggested. Edgar didn't reply, and I think it may have been because he didn't want to think about what might happen if the people were relocated to Figaro. "We could send them to Narshe," I said, "they could probably use a few more people." Sabin walked over to us from where he was. "Whatever happens, we must get back to the airship and form a plan. There's no use walking around unprepared." I thought it was a good idea considering the only reason we had to stay here was to pick up all the people. Eventually, we got around to loading everyone onto the airship. The sad thing is, the airship still wasn't that full. "How about we take a vote? Whichever town gets the most picks is where we drop everyone off." said Terra. Narshe got 4 votes, Figaro got 6, Kohlingen got 1, and Albrook got 3. "Figaro it is," said Edgar. "Although they will probably have a lot on their hands." No one asked Edgar what he meant, so we pressed onward to Figaro. Four hours later, we reached Figaro. We found everyone rooms so that they could live more comfortably, and Edgar gave them all funds and jobs so they could live their lives somewhat happy. Now our topmost concern was to find out what the thing that attacked us was, and how to kill it.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7 Rangnaareshk

All attempts at finding strategies for defeating near impossible enemies were not paying off. We did research on floating eyeball, and how to possibly defeat it, but none of the books had anything to say. One very ancient book mentioned 12 higher powers, one of which was an eyeball, but we couldn't make out what the book was trying to tell us. 'In the moste ancient worlde, there were 12 gods of moste extraordinary powere: 6 of them were in the employmente of God, 6 were of the devile Himself. Not muche is known to this day of what happened to these poweres, but many scholars suspect they brutalized each othere, until they died of horrible woundes.' I wonder if these ancient people knew what they were talking about, it seemed like bull to me. I decided to retire because I couldn't find any more information. As soon as my foot touched the stairs, Terra screamed. "I know what that eye was," she said, trembling, "here's what the book says."

_In the time before humans and the universe, there were twelve._

_Six were good and pure; they came from the heavens..._

_Six were evil; they came from the darkest depths of Hell..._

_The first had claws that could rip stone from the earth._

_The second had a cry that could turn life to stone._

_The third had an eye that pierced the soul._

_The fourth was the master of weapons; his swords could pierce anything._

_The fifth could not be harmed by any weapon, and was the first to appear on the world._

_The sixth was the master of all the evils, and had qualities of all evil._

_The seventh was divine and pure, with a healing touch and righteous power._

_The eighth was wise and kind, and could forgive any sin._

_The ninth was a light swordsman with a sword of such great goodness it could tear evil apart._

_The tenth had no special power, but could look the worst evil in the eye and banish it._

_The eleventh was a master of magic and was stronger than any of the twelve._

_The last was the supreme ruler of the twelve, and despised the 6 demons._

_These 12 powers managed to live with each other's existence, until one day, the master of the six demons had an argument with the supreme power. 'Why do you always fight for the power of righteousness?' he asked. 'Why don't you take all that power and destroy all who oppose you?' The ruler replied calmly and explained that he would rather help those who were good and watch over all life to make sure it was going in the right direction. The master of the demons was disgusted, and called on his five minions to fight the six deities of good. 'Sacrifice yourselves in the sustenance of evil! Throw your lives to the good of Hell!' The third demon, Rangnaareshk, ran to save his own life, and hid under the sea. The eleven remaining powers fought brutal wars, resulting in all of their deaths. Rangnaareshk realized he was the only evil left in the world, and happily reported back to Hell, but none wanted to see him. He was banished, and exiled to find his own way. This is the story of the twelve greats, and what their fate was. All dead but one evil signifies that one day, he will seek his revenge and destroy all life on our earth._

"We can guess that what attacked the town was Rangnaareshk. What we don't know his how to harm him." Terra said. This time, it was Mog who spoke. "I think that now we know what we're dealing with, we should adjust our strategies accordingly." How we were supposed to fight some terrible evil I wasn't sure, but I knew we must find a way, or the planet would be gone as we knew it.


End file.
